Almost exactly three years ago, I wrote about why OSNews was no longer OSNews: the alternative operating system scene had died, and OSNews, too, had to go with the times and move towards reporting on a new wave of operating systems - mobile, and all the repercussions that the explosion of smartphones and tablets have caused. Still, I was wondering something today: why aren't we seeing alternative operating systems on mobile?

It would be interesting to see how Haiku could be morphed into a mobile OS. Some of the underlying UI concepts appear to be adaptable to finger/touch interactions.

However, let's not divert their limited resources nor saddle the development towards R1 with foreign stuff. Also, the current code base may not be as easily adaptable to ARM as the old BeOS code base (which started on the Hobbit, moved on to the PPC, and finally added X86).

One thing though. If the Microsoft Surface (X86 based) continues on the commercial path it appears to be currently heading for, it could become an ideal platform for a mobile oriented hobby OS. After having missed-out on the clearance of HP Touchpads, I'll keep an eye open for the price drop on the Surfaces when it will come.

Just as a clarification here, we do in fact have ARM, PPC and x86-64 ports in various states of completion. It's not so much a technical hurdle of the architecture as it is finding people motivated to work on it. Most of what there is of the ARM port was done by a GSoC student a few years ago who has mostly been busy with school since, and as such hasn't really had a chance to touch it since.

Given the focus on the x86 desktop, most of the others haven't really done much with it beyond ensuring that it continues to build with the various other ongoing changes.